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Recent models on parenting propose different roles for fathers and mothers in the development of child anxiety. Specifically, it is suggested that fathers' challenging parenting behavior, in which the child is playfully encouraged to push her limits, buffers against child anxiety. In this longitudinal study, we explored whether the effect of challenging parenting on children's social anxiety differed between fathers and mothers. Fathers and mothers from 94 families were separately observed with their two children (44 % girls), aged 2 and 4 years at Time 1, in three structured situations involving one puzzle task and two games. Overinvolved and challenging parenting behavior were coded. Child social anxiety was measured by observing the child's response to a stranger at Time 1, and half a year later at Time 2, and by parental ratings. In line with predictions, father's challenging parenting behavior predicted less subsequent observed social anxiety of the 4-year-old child. Mothers' challenging behavior, however, predicted more observed social anxiety of the 4-year-old. Parents' overinvolvement at Time 1 did not predict change in observed social anxiety of the 4-year-old child. For the 2-year-old child, maternal and paternal parenting behavior did not predict subsequent social anxiety, but early social anxiety marginally did. Parent-rated social anxiety was predicted by previous parental ratings of social anxiety, and not by parenting behavior. Challenging parenting behavior appears to have favorable effects on observed 4-year-old's social anxiety when displayed by the father. Challenging parenting behavior emerges as an important focus for future research and interventions.

A prevalence-based cost-of-illness study using a societal perspective was conducted to investigate the cost-of-illness in clinically anxious youth aged 8-18 in The Netherlands. Discriminant validity of the cost diary used was obtained by comparing costs of families with an anxious child (n = 118) to costs of families from the general population (n = 41). To examine the convergent validity, bottom-up acquired costs derived from cost diaries were compared to top-down acquired costs obtained from national registrations. Bottom-up acquired costs measured by means of cost diaries amounted to Euro 2,748 per family of a clinically referred anxious child per annum. Societal costs of families with clinically anxious children were almost 21 times as high compared to families from the general population. With respect to convergent validity, total health care costs using the bottom-up approach from clinically anxious children were quite comparable to those of top-down data of anxious children, although costs within the subcategories differed considerably. Clinical anxiety disorders in childhood cost the Dutch society more than 20 million euros a year. Based on results of discriminate and convergent validity, the cost diary seems a valid method in establishing cost-of-illness in childhood anxiety disorders.

Amanda had come to the group wanting to learn how to be calmer in parenting her 9 year old daughter who was recently diagnosed with ADHD. In the second session, she described her experience looking at her daughter with beginner’s mind: “It was a revelation to me. Normally I see her as my challenge. But while she was talking, I noticed how sensitive and kind she is. She really is her own little person, separate from me.”

Parenting can be one of the most emotionally rich and satisfying experiences in our lives. As parents, we are privileged to revisit ourselves as children, as we are present for our own child’s unfolding experience. The joy and wonder that our child experiences as she discovers a ladybug nestling on a new green leaf in the springtime becomes our joy and wonder as well. When our child eagerly anticipates the arrival of Santa, we too feel the excitement and joy of his imminent arrival, temporarily suspending our disbelief. It is because these experiences touch us at such a deep level, reconnecting us to early powerful emotional experiences, which gives raising our child the intense emotional richness.

Do you recall how you felt the first time you laid eyes on your newborn baby? Or how you feel gazing at your child as he lies sleeping? This is the mind of loving-kindness: wide open, boundless love and kindness. As parents, we are already intimately familiar with the mind of loving-kindness. With mindfulness, we learn to practice this mind.

We often wonder how participants that once took a Mindful Parenting course are doing. Do they still meditate, formally or informally, with or without the support of a meditation community or yoga course? Do they remember from time to time things they have learned during the course, such as how to take care of themselves and how to be less reactive in their parenting? And how do they cope with new transitions and challenges in their family life, such as restarting a job, children going to high school, children becoming adolescents fighting authority, their parent dying, a divorce, a new love relationship that the children are ambivalent about? Have they sought further treatment for themselves or their child or not? Some of the parents we see again on one of our mindfulness days that our treatment center UvA minds organizes several times a year and for which all parents that once took a Mindful Parenting course at our treatment center are invited – if they have indicated to want to remain on the invitation list. But as these days are in silence, we don’t talk with them and don’t get verbal feedback. Some of the parents we still see because their children follow a therapy in our treatment center or they themselves receive further parent training or support. And on rare occasion, we bump into a parent on an unexpected moment in a completely different context and may have a chat if they initiate it. However, most of the participants of our courses we never see again after the 8-week follow-up.

Parenting – the effort required to bring one human child to maturity – can be one of the greatest joys in our lives. But for many parents, raising a child also brings along new stresses (Cohen, Kessler, & Gordon, 1997). For parents struggling with psychological problems such as depression or anxiety, or raising children with developmental or emotional difficulties, the stress of parenting is even higher (Deater-Deckard, 1998). The seeming ubiquity of parenting stress has led us to wonder whether there might be an evolutionary basis for parenting stress. To paraphrase evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, do we have an “evolutionary right” to our parenting stress (Hrdy, 1999)? In other words, can an evolutionary perspective on parenting help us to understand the stresses which modern parents face? And how can mindfulness help with this?

Running Mindful Parenting groups, we as trainers have been impressed by the depth and breadth of the effects of the course on most participants, as we have illustrated with case examples in Session 8 and the follow-up session. However, we should be aware of the rose-tinted glasses that we as therapists wear when we evaluate subjectively the effects of what we do: research has shown that therapists tend to strongly overestimate their effects (Margraf, p.c., April 2012). An objective assessment of the effects of a course by all participants, including the ones who have not completed the course (the so-called treatment dropouts), or have not completed all measurement moments (the so-called measurement dropouts), is therefore important to estimate the true effects of Mindful Parenting, also in order to compare it to other interventions focusing on parenting, such as Parent Management Training, and to other interventions focusing on decreasing problem behavior in children.

If you made a holiday card to send around this year, chances are you selected a photo of your children smiling and laughing or one of the whole family smiling, perhaps with arms around each other. Or perhaps you made a photo collection of your last holiday with images of smiling happy children and smiling happy parents.

Parenting is one of the most consuming and responsible tasks in a lifetime for many parents, yet parents do it with love, joy, pride, and a sense of fulfillment. In fact, raising children, and having grandchildren, may be the most fulfilling “job” that we ever have and being a good father or a good mother our highest ambition in life. If we would be asked what we want people to say about us at our funeral, having been a good parent (and grandparent) is what comes up for most of us who have had the fortune to be a parent (and have grandchildren).

How often do we really inhabit our own bodies? Think about it. How often do you actually feel what is going on in your body, while it is happening? Our bodies are our homes, we live in them and through them, yet more often than not, we treat them dismissively, only reluctantly heeding their signals that we are tired, in pain, or reaching our limit. Instead, we live in our heads, dwelling in the cockpit of our being, directing our experience with our rationale thoughts, goals, and plans, only occasionally dropping down to the lower floors to check out what’s going on below.

How do we remember to be mindful as parents and persons, and go on with some regular formal or informal meditation practice, after the course has finished? After the 8th session of the course, an intense period of mindfulness practice has come to an end. Parents may have felt relieved, as participating in the Mindful Parenting course may have been a challenge in their busy lives. On the other hand, the weekly group meetings may have functioned as a reminder to practice, formally and informally, and the sharing of home practice in the group may have provided the social pressure needed to keep on practicing. The course itself may have become a main reason to practice.

In this chapter, we present an overview of the Mindful Parenting program and discuss the main themes of each session. We also address some of the practical issues involved in setting up a Mindful Parenting course: who the course is intended for and in what kinds of settings, what kind of training is necessary for the teacher, how to get started, and some of the potential difficulties you might encounter.

What went through your mind when you read this? If you’re like many parents, you can imagine only too well the sense of stress accompanying this scene. Maybe you can imagine the feelings of helplessness, anxiety, anger, and stress; maybe you can even imagine the feeling of tension rising in your chest, your impatience, the thoughts that might run through your mind, and what you might say and do.

Parenting stress can bring out the worst in us. Those moments when we “lose it” with our children, and erupt in anger and frustration, are the moments we regret most as parents, as we know they leave traces, just as the traces we struggle with from our own youth, our interactions with our parents. In My struggle, Karl Ove Knausgard describes such moments of a father with his young daughters, wondering why it is that he gets so out of control.